A Heated Debate Between Two Charismatic Geniuses: A Cardinal Fan (Jeff Lung) and a Tiger Fan (Allen Krause)

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Dickensian Asylum, One Good Player, Bad Paper. Little to Make Me Excite.

The Cubs, for me, are pushing the human existence backwards and making hearts sad.

Another season is already bogging me down.

I was watching the Rockies kill/drub/maim the Cubs on Sunday (the same expansion team that has already been to a World Series, and, like the Marlins teams that have won two so far, also have exciting young talent despite playing in a small market) I couldn’t change the channel back to the NBA playoffs fast enough.

My beloved Bulls and D. Rose are the only things keeping me breathing.

With the Cubs, it’s not so much the bad baseball and the lack of power, but mostly just the fact that they’re boring and unsatisfying. I think I’d rather watch a touring band of angry flying Arabs and Mexicans on ice. Then you’d have something! Or just So Taguchi.

Starlin Castro might be the best player in Chicago, and some hope exists for that fact alone, but with all the bad contracts and old players getting older, I must face the music now: the Cubs can’t compete for baseball immortality by winning the World Series for at least another 2-4 YEARS. I guess that’s not the end of the world given the century mark came and went.

But, it still blows.

I had a birthday recently and time moves faster now. When I was 15 I thought I’d never be 25, but that happened. Then I knew I had forever til 30. Then… that happened.

The Cubs last had a real chance of winning it all three years ago. Swept by the Dodgers and feeling and hurting and poopooing and getting raped way too much like when they were swept the year before. Look, this isn’t 1500 words about how much pain I’ve endured in my life being a Cubs fan. This is about “I know they’re not great and won’t be for a while but please let them just. be. fun……”

They play station-to-station baseball, have very little power and carry a distinct lack of personality (the personality I get from Carlos Zambrano I don’t need so much). So in essence, they’re a slow team that can’t hit bombs and are extremely boring. On a daily basis. GUHHH…… HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE??

The one thing to rely on (we thought) was decent starting pitching. Currently the Cubs have the least amount of quality starts in baseball.

For the love of god, if you’re going to suck, at least be fun! I mean be like fun bad!!?? Like when the Bears are bad you’ll at least have a good time watching Devin Hester returning kicks or Jay Cutler throwing it all over the field or Lovie Smith waking up once in a while to say something to our lesbian-looking offensive coordinator Michael Martz in a roller coaster train wreck loss. That can be fun!

The Cubs were terrible ten years ago but Sammy Sosa at least was exalting the baseball gods with soaring rips into the bleachers completely unaided by anabolic substances of any kind. Seriously. This is true. He told me. When Kerry wood pitched, grown men wept, women went into early labor, George Bush liked black people, and I thought Creed had potential as a legitimate artistic talent. Dusty Baker gave verbose speeches of the utmost linguistic integrity, dripping with so much backwoods gibberish that I hung on his every word and swooned with how a man so simple could speak so eloquently…

“It’s called hitting, and it ain’t called walking. Do you ever see the top 10 walking? You see top 10 batting average. A lot of those top 10 do walk.”

WORDSY!

“When you first come up, you want to get some hits”

VERBOSOSITY!!“Peoples have been trying to bring me down. That’s OK, that’s how it is. Actually, that makes me stronger. It’s OK. What are you going to say when I kick somebody’s butt?”

SUPERINTIMIDATINGWORDSYVERBOSOSITY!!!

When I first moved to Chicago, going to Wrigley was a cathartic experience. Finally, I could go to games whenever I wanted, which was something I remember dreaming of when I was just a pup watching with Grandpa every Saturday on WGN with Stone and Harry. After watching the game with Grandpa, I would immediately run outside to field tennis balls off the concrete stairs, pretending I was Shawon Dunston.

I don’t have great memories of Wrigley anymore. Just heartache and a wanton desire for greatness. The fond memories I have of the Cubs are really just afternoons hangin with Grandpa. That’s what I miss.

Now it’s just pain.

And again, I’d see a priest but I’m still good looking enough that he might try to do odd things to me.

The Cubs may lose this season but for the love of god…. give me excite!!

On Sunday, April 10, 2011, I spent 3 hours and 51 minutes running 26.2 miles along the streets of St. Louis, Missouri; and I can honestly say, it changed my life.

We often hear “the marathon” used as a metaphor for myriad events. The baseball season… is a marathon. Every December I look forward to… “A Christmas Story” movie marathon. Life itself… is a marathon. But when we say all of the above, what we are really just saying is that some things take a long, long time to complete.

Let me assure you, the marathon is much more than that.

It’s setting a goal and working towards it.

It’s taking pride in your body, listening to it, working to make it better.

It’s getting up at the crack of dawn while all your friends are sleeping in.

It’s metaphorizing your life, making up for past mistakes, proving you’re not a nobody.

It’s throwing the hammer down on negativity.

It’s getting a song stuck in your head that… just… won’t… stop.

It’s rewarding yourself with a big, fat, juicy burger every Sunday.

It’s asking yourself “I paid to do this????” only to realize, “Hell yeah I paid to do this!!!!”

It’s thanking strangers who hand you Gatorade and oranges and Vasoline (not always in that order).

It’s being aware of your surroundings, taking in the sights, the smells, the cowbells.

It’s being extraordinary…

It’s being inspired…

It’s being an inspiration.

But most of all, it’s feeling like death only to discover just how alive you really are.

Don’t hate me ‘cuz I’m right.

Peace,

Jeff

*PS, To the lovely, smiling woman who held up a sign shortly before Mile 3 that read “If you don’t finish, Albert Pujols will sign with the Cubs”… well, I want you to know that around the 22 mile marker, when I just about wanted to die, I thought about that sign and I finished that damn race for you. MUAH!

To celebrate the beginning of the 2011 season Jeff and Johanna try to remember Mia Hamm’s husband’s name… he had a… played short… ah, nevermind. Also, the fellas also jam about all things Opening Day, Prince Fielder’s belly, Jason Bay’s awfulness, new developments in Keith Carmack’s Pete Hill documentary, why the LOLstros are better than the Cubs and much, much
more… all to make you happy ending!

To celebrate the beginning of the 2011 season Jeff and Johanna try to remember Mia Hamm’s husband’s name… he had a… played short… ah, nevermind. Also, the fellas also jam about all things Opening Day, Prince Fielder’s belly, Jason Bay’s awfulness, new developments in Keith Carmack’s Pete Hill documentary, why the LOLstros are better than the Cubs and much, much
more… all to make you happy ending!

When that one game exposes a rudimentary flaw that I have been gripin’ about for over three years now, then that’s when trouble starts. That’s when walls in my apartment become punch-holed and that’s when my neighbors consider burning me at the stake for my insane bouts of baseball rapture.

Ryan Franklin… brother… I love ya… and I know you only blew two saves last year, but you ain’t a closer.

Pitching to contact is fine if you’re Derek Lowe. It’s fine if you’re a starter. Heck, it’s fine if you’re guaranteed that the batted balls are going straight into someone’s glove. But in the 9th inning, with a one run lead… I don’t want ANYONE ON BASE. NO ONE.

Ya hear me?

When I bring a guy in to close a game, I want someone with firepower, someone with strikeout potential… someone who throws GAS, someone with a wicked slider, someone with an impossible-to-hit cutter.

Think Mo Rivera. Think Dennis Eckersely. Think Neftali Feliz.

The closer’s job is to come in and close the game, not to let ‘em hit it and hope your defense saves you.

No.

The best way to close a game is to miss the hitters’ bats. And Ryan Franklin has a real hard time doin’ that.

As if the official opening of the baseball season wasn’t enough, the Star Wars Miniland at LegoLand California also opens today! And what could be more American than baseball and Legos? Both involve the assembly of complex structures from seemingly small and interchangeable building blocks. Both are incredibly overpriced. Both are better with beer.

Over here at RSBS, we couldn’t be happier about the start of the season. Maybe it’s the hellish winter that still hasn’t quite let go. Maybe it’s the fact that thinking about football also means thinking about the all but imminent work stoppage. Maybe it’s just that baseball and spring go together like apples and pie. Whatever it is, baseball is back and from now until November, you can bet that we’ll be letting you know what we think.

Well….. The first Mike Quade tirade is over. Carlos Silva is gone and I couldn’t be happier. In the offseason, as we learned more about Quade and his pastoral fishing trips, thoughts about fly-fishing technique and bait and tackle strategery, I began to wonder what would happen when there needs to be a time to put the hammer down. I got my answer this weekend. When Silva had his tirade earlier in the season over a perceived lack of effort from Aramis Ramirez and other players in a meaningless spring training game, it soon became apparent that his teammates in the locker room had just about enough from this untradeable giant throbbing male member. By the way, this horrible pitcher had a 10.9 ERA in spring training and is a complete a$$bag.

Another thing we’ve learned from tirades in baseball (or maybe it’s just me) is that stupid, childish behavior gets you nowhere. No one ever got better at baseball by being yelled at to be “better”, or try “harder”.

In basketball, you can achieve better results on defense with more energy on that side of the ball, but primarily defense is a team objective. Football is almost entirely a team sport with thousands of moving parts. In baseball, which is an individual game, players don’t get better by being yelled at to try harder. Defense is improved over practicing fundamentals and years of adjustments, like how and when to get to a certain part of the field.

I loved when Carlos Zambrano last year called out (gold glove first basemen), Derek Lee, that he wasn’t giving enough effort on a line drive up the line, when in actuality, Zambrano used Lee as a scapegoat for his ineptness and temperamental issues. After the line drive Lee missed, Z gave up a 3 run bomb.

If I could make people better at baseball by yelling at them, I would have my own instructional video a la Johnny Bench. And it would be called “Listen you f**ktw*t, piece of s*** kid: Be better at baseball right the f*** now or go die inside a dying elephant’s rectum. Please?” I think this could work and be very effective to young aspiring baseball players. It’s like saying guys at the plate need to try harder. Plate aptitude is based on concentration, patience and HOURS AND YEARS of practice. Not try. There is no try.

The best parts of these player on player rants is that it always comes out that the accusing player ALWAYS admits eventually that they were just venting because they were mad at themselves.

Now that Silva has been released, the right pitcher for the future is Andrew Cashner. He has been promoted, Mateo moves to the bullpen and Quade can move on. When Silva talked behind Quade’s back to the media; that was the last straw for him. Jim Hendry, for once did the right thing and finally removed the team and the fans from the original blunder that got us here in the first place with the indefensible signing of Milton Bradley. Which, by the way, 29 other GMs in the league looked at like we lost our damn fool minds and laughed and laughed….and…laughed when as predicted, he colossally blew up in the Cubs’ face.

Mike Quade and the Cubs can move on now in his young inaugural season which is already strife with all the usual Cub plight we’re used to. One hundred years of bad memories, horrible contracts, bad paper, bad karma. Soriano…….(enough said)… Can Ramirez bounce back after hitting .190 for most of the year last season? On and on again.

If Mike had to deal with Silva staying and walking on Quade’s sack day in and day out and more second guessing, it would be totally unnecessary. Quade seems to say and do all the right things so far, (especially for a guy that’s been waiting his whole life for this and paid every due imaginable). But when the initial scuffle happened in early March, he said that some infighting could be good for a team. POPPYCOCK.

All it did was confirm what we’ve been hearing for a while; that Silva was not only a replacement level pitcher but also an undeserving malcontent. Eating the money sucks ($8.5 million), but we basically knew that would happen after about two weeks of jagbag Milton Bradley.

We live in a post-WikiLeaks world. Or at least that’s what I keep hearing. From what I can gather, basically this means that nothing you say or do can ever be assumed safe. Make a racist comment, someone somewhere probably overheard it and recorded it. Record a sex tape or even take a few racy photos and you can be sure they will make their way to the internet. Overstay your welcome at a friend’s house and wait for the video recreation on YouTube. That last one gets extra interesting when it’s meta-post-WikiLeaks:

By the way, try saying that five times fast. Meta-post-WikiLeaks… Meta-post-WikiLeaks… Menopause-we-gleeks… damn.

There are solutions to this problem. For instance, you can avoid Facebook, stop posting on Twitter and shut down your blog. But where’s the fun in that? If there’s no Twitter then there’s no hilariosity from Barry Zito. And of course no blogging means no RSBS. Heaven forbid!

If you could spend the day with any non-Cardinal baseball player
currently playing in the majors, who would it be and what would you do?

MelissaSandusky, OH____________________________________Is it just me or am I constantly being set up by my friends and dear readers to expound on my favorite baseballers in a way that encourages embracing a certain, subtly disclosed homoerotic undertone?

Or, maybe I’m just reading too much into it.

I dunno.

Okay, Melissa, so you take away my number one and two options by canceling out the Cards; but let me assure you, the number three spot is also a no-brainer. For me, anyway. Of course, you may be shocked to hear it but for this hypothetical man-crush date (is it a man-crush date or did I make that part up too?) I’m going with the one, the only:

Stephen James Strasburg.

WHAT!?!?

Exactly.

Here’s how our date day will go…

9 a.m. WorkoutI pick Stephen up and we head to the Nats’ training facility. I am Stephen’s shadow. I do very little talking and a whole lot of observing. I don’t wanna make this strange for the 22 year old phenom, so I just go with the flow. I know Stephen is out for the season, recovering from Tommy John surgery, but a man’s still gotta stay in shape and I wanna know how he does it. (Also, when no one is looking, I coat Nyjer Morgan’s supportive equipment with government grade Tiger Balm.)12 p.m. LunchWe eat a healthy, protein-packed lunch that will fire our fast twitch muscle fibers so we recover faster, to become stronger. I now start asking questions, overly aware of how annoying I can be when given free reign to discuss all-things baseball. Eventually, these questions lead to hitter preparation science, so off we go to…

2 p.m. Video RoomI want to get inside the head of Stephen Strasburg. So I present to him a reel of the Major League’s best hitters: Albert Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez, Joey Votto. I want to know how he is going to approach them. I want to see him point out their holes. Stephen, of course, is as calculated as he is modest, and he ain’t givin’ up too many secrets.

3 p.m. Practice Field [For this part, let us forget that Stephen can’t pitch right now, shall we?]Luckily, I brought along my catcher’s equipment from high school (it all still fits!), including my over sized mitt. I take my place behind the plate and ask Stephen to go easy on me. In high school I think the fastest fastball I ever caught was in the 70 mph range. After three Strasburg change-ups, I lose all feeling in my catching hand. But this is Stephen Friggin’ Strasburg, so I man up, take the pain and ask for more. Watching his yacker yack and his fastball bite, wow… just, wow.

5 p.m. My CribAll my best friends (Mr. Krause, Johanna Mahmud, Yadier Molina) come over to my place. We got beer. We got wings. We got pizza. We also got a big screen HD TV showing the very first Strasmas ever: June 8, 2010 — the greatest single regular season game that didn’t mean anything, ever played, in the history of my universe. Ever. We watch in amazement as Stephen talks us through each at-bat, each pitch, each hair raising moment.

After three plus hours of pizza, wings, beer and Strasmas in my very own living room, I am finally able to sit back on my couch, relax, and wait to die.

It’s been a splendid day.

Life is good.

Don’t hate me.

‘Cuz I’m right.

Peace,

Jeff

- – -**Have a topic you want to see us Filibuster? Want a
free pimp for your blog? How ’bout just making Mr. Krause look as silly as Mario Lopez hosting a television show (trust us, it ain’t hard)? Send us your Filibuster questions
by emailing kraulung@gmail.com or by commenting below.

The proverbial (and literal) gloves come off in this verbal masquerade of utter ridiculousness and yes, injuries do occur (though mostly to Johanna and, since they are mental in nature, hardly noticed). Among the topics of conversation one will find: Jeff’s wandering Forever 21 eyes, Zack Greinke’s ribs, the difference between a half and a full nelson, Cameroonian baseball, Bud Selig-bashing take 47 and much, much more… all to make you smile, laugh and play!

*Special thanks to our PodMaster Keith Carmack. Keith is all over the interwebz killin’ it. You should definitely check out his crew and their subsequently hilarious podcast at Undercard Films. And keep your eye out for what’s next. Dude’s makin’ a movie!

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